


Alarms

by DarthSuki



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood and Injury, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mild Blood, Past Abuse, Post-Strex Kevin, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 20:13:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17331611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: Though StrexCorp is now defunct and Kevin has, with you, a new life to live in the desert otherworld (New Desert Bluffs), he is still haunted by nightmares and trauma from the years he spent under the company's weight. He often wakes up broken, but at least he has you there to put him back together.





	Alarms

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a request on my WTNV writing blog. If you would like to submit a request or check out my other related work, [go check it out here!](https://wtnvwritings.tumblr.com/)

It’s strange to wake up without the sound of an alarm. Screeching. Howling.  _Stabbing_. It’s hard to let your consciousness come over your mind naturally, to open your eyes and peer up to the ceiling of the bedroom without that painful yet familiar noise forcing you awake to start your day. It was a noise you hated, hated so much especially because you could  _not_  turn it off, could not change it--the alarm was wirelessly controlled by forces outside yourself and optimized by those forces for ‘peak productivity’.

You waited in bed for several long minutes, counting all the little specks on the ceiling and waiting for an alarm you knew would never come, hands clenched tight to the sheets with a nervousness that only time could help numb.

 _They are gone,_  you reminded yourself.  _They are gone._

Eventually you get out of bed, pressing your bare feet to the cold, hard floor. The gentle shock of temperature difference from the warm bed is enough to tighten your focus and thoughts, enough that you turn your head to realize that the other side of the bed is empty. Where a person should have been you saw an attempt at neat and orderly sheets pulled taught and tucked under the mattress. They didn’t look all that neat, but that was probably largely due to the fact that the bed had yet one more occupant when the other had fruitlessly tried to tidy up their side of it.

Still, you’re not surprised to find it empty.

You get to your feet with a gentle breath in, and then a breath out, collecting yourself before making your way out the bedroom and to the main hallway. The only noise you could hear was the sound of winds outside, gently brushing against the windows, sand whipping up and around in what almost sounded like gentle rain if you pretended hard enough; there was never any rain in the desert otherworld, and you quite missed that weather feature.

As you step down the hallway another noise becomes loud enough to focus on. It’s a gentle mumbling, a creek of a chair and the occasional (but just as gentle) curse. It’s coming from one of the rooms, the...old room to be precise. His room. His...hobby room. You’re still at least persuading him to call it a hobby room, hoping to pull away another thorn of manipulation  _that company_  had driven into his mind.

“Kevin?” You ask, a moment before knocking gently at the door. There is no answer, so you give it another moment before finally clutching a hand at the cold metal doorknob. A heavy feeling of familiar terror and dread start to settle in your bones as you enter the room as if already knowing what you were about to see before your eyes could see it.

The room is in complete and utter disarray. Furniture is turned over, as if flipped violently and there is something resembling broken glass shattered on the carpet. Though you do your best not to let your eyes glance to see in more detail, there looks to be dark streaks of dull red on the walls, as if someone had wiped their hands across the surface in a hurry; you try not to let your thoughts dwell on the metallic smell hanging dull and putrid in the air.

No, no you don’t dwell on any of those things. Not the sight, not the chaos, not the smell--instead you focus your eyes on the man on the other side of the room. You can see him standing in just flannel sleeping pants, shirtless, turned away from you and facing the opposite wall of the room. Though the room is dim you can still see little scars criss-crossing over his skin, highlighted cross-hatches that healed a touch lighter than the rest of his flesh. You can see him with a hand reached out to the wall though you can’t yet tell what he’s doing with it.

“...K...Kevin?” You ask, barely finding your voice.

It’s suddenly then that the man seems to realize that you’re in the room. He snaps from his trance and quickly spins around, meeting your gaze with his--

Black eyes, too-wide of a smile and his face, his chest, his hands--they are blood-stained.

“Oh! I didn’t hear you there, dearest!” The man’s smile grows wider, nearing something almost inhuman. “I assume you woke up. Without your alarm. Ah, I suppose that’s a thing that people normally do! I woke up a few hours ago because I didn't want to miss my alarm--but how funny it was that I forgot we don't have one anymore!”

If you were anyone but yourself this sight, this room, this man would have terrified you, would have left you shaking and crying and begging to wake up from such a nightmare--but you are you and that man is Kevin. You know him, you know this and you’re not scared; no, you’re scared  _and_  concerned.

“What...were you doing?” you ask after a breath. Kevin giggled, his voice sounding almost childish, as if you were asking such a silly thing.

“I was just writing down the hours I was asleep for the daily productivity log!”

You shift your weight, eyes briefly catching the writing behind him. It’s a messy jumble of numbers and letters that don’t even begin to make sense to you. The writing looks nonsensical and written in that same dull red color as everywhere else on the walls.

“Well, since you’re finally awake and I’ve already gotten this going, I’ll write your hours too!”

You take a step forward before the man can turn back around.

“Kevin,” You are very careful in how you line your words together. “Whose blood is that?”

You know you have to ask though the notion makes you feel a little sick. There is a flash of emotion over Kevin’s distorted features, something akin to worry, but it quickly falls away as hallow joy takes it’s place once more.

“Oh don’t worry dearest,” the man said in a lilting, sickly-sweet tone. “I didn’t hurt anyone--I know you don’t like it when I do that. I just...well, it seemed like the laptop wasn’t working when I tried to log into the StrexCorp database to log in my mandated hours of behavior. I figured I could write them down on paper, but then I couldn’t find any pens or pencils and I just...”

He gestured to the wall. When your eyes slowly looked back at his face, you could see a thin drip of blood rolling down from the corner of his mouth.

“...I just had to make due with what I had! You know how my supervisor gets when I don’t notate my behavior hours on time. Oh... So... Angry...”

There’s another flash of emotion over the man’s face, this time something you can’t discern. You don’t care to take the time to figure it out because you’re already stepping forward, throwing your arms around Kevin’s blood-stained body with a level of lacking self-preservation one only had when they loved another.

“ _Kevin._ ”

The name is thin, terse, and serious.

“It’s...okay now. You don’t have to do this.”

This isn’t the first time he’s shattered. This isn’t the first time he’s awoken with the distorted awareness of his current life, trying to go about his day-to-day habits beneath the excruciating weight of a company that had broken him emotionally as much as they did physically.

This isn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Kevin stills in your arms. He still barely knows what it feels like to be cared for. He still barely understands what it means to be loved, even less on how to truly and healthily love in return. He stands there awkwardly for a few moments before you feel his body shake and, slowly, his arms loosely wrap around you in kind.

His face presses into the crook of your shoulder and neck, buried against your skin. You can feel the sticky, slick feeling of half-dried blood on your palms and fingers where they lay on his back. If Kevin was human you would worry more for the amount of blood on the wall, on the floor, on  _him._ Instead you worry for the man’s shattered psyche and broken soul.

“...It hurts,” the man finally says, his voice a soft, weak whisper in your ear. He can barely keep the sounds strung together well enough for you to even discern that they are words. “Everything hurts and I don’t like it. Please.”

“It’s going to be okay,” you murmur in turn, your roles so painfully switched between the two of you. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”

In the still-painful breadth of memory you remember when you were the one in his arms, crying yourself to sleep. You remember feeling the ever-constant presence of  _that company_ over your shoulders, watching you at every moment of every day. You remember the fear and the threat of pain--but you remember Kevin...protecting you. You remember him saying the same words in your ear every night--did he mean them then? Did he even  _believe_  in them then? You still aren’t quite sure, but you hold Kevin tighter still in the present day.

“Lets go wash off all this and bandage you up,” you say after a few more heavy moments, eyes closed so you don’t have to look at the sight of the room, feel reminded of the pain, the weight, the company the---anything. You didn’t want to think of anything but the man in your arms. 

Of healing. Of growing. Of settling in a new life in the new town the two of you were in, somewhere in the vastness of a desert otherworld.

Kevin doesn’t say anything but gently nods, face still pressed to the crook of your neck and his arms still wrapped, loosely but genuinely, around you.


End file.
